


Tony's Adventures As A Cat

by TenSpencerRiedPlease



Category: Black Panther (2018), Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, BAMF T'Challa (Marvel), For reasons, I Don't Even Know, M/M, Prince T'Challa (Marvel), Protective T'Challa (Marvel), Protective Tony Stark, Random & Short, Rhodey Is a Good Bro, Shuri The Inventor, Tony Being Tony, Tony is a cat, also for reasons, and tony is the cat here, based off another fic of mine, except tchalla was the cat, though they are also canon reasons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-03
Updated: 2017-07-03
Packaged: 2018-11-22 18:05:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11385525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TenSpencerRiedPlease/pseuds/TenSpencerRiedPlease
Summary: Tony has never liked magic but now, thanks to a run in with a witch he probably shouldn’t have spurned, he was a damn cat. The good news was that he was at least a pretty cat with thick, dark hair and golden eyes similar to his human features and humans were pretty fond of cute cats. Except they keptpettinghim instead of feeding him.The last thing he expects is to run into a nicely dressed younger guy who carried himself strongly. Tony hadn’t met anyone who carried themselves like that so he wanders over mostly out of curiosity.





	Tony's Adventures As A Cat

Tony has never liked magic but now, thanks to a run in with a witch he probably shouldn’t have spurned, he was a damn _cat_. The good news was that he was at least a pretty cat with thick, dark hair and golden eyes similar to his human features and humans were pretty fond of cute cats. Except they kept _petting_ him instead of feeding him. It wasn’t that he disliked the attention- cats felt some things when they were pet- but he was hungry. By the time day three hit he was debating on eating garbage and honestly that just wasn’t right.

The last thing he expects is to run into a nicely dressed younger guy who carried himself strongly. Tony hadn’t met anyone who carried themselves like that so he wanders over mostly out of curiosity. The least he figured he’d get was pet and after a long hot day and no food still he was fine with that. Instead when the man spies him he immediately crouches to Tony’s level and holds out his hand slowly. Tony has none of the reservations of the strays around here so he skips all the formalities and just trots over to the guy, head butting the palm of his hand.

“Well you’re not shy, are you? You aren’t wearing a collar,” he notes, looking at Tony’s neck. Yeah, because he wasn’t a cat but he could hardly tell this guy that. All he could do was meow though he guessed if he could actually speak that’d be frightening.

Tony meows at him, not entirely sure what he’s trying to communicate honestly but it felt nice. The man scratches this spot behind his ears and he leans into it, his eyes narrowing into slits the way they did when something felt nice. He’s seen cats and dogs do it before but now he understood why. This guy knew his cats.

“Are you hungry?” the guys asks and Tony just about jumps out of his fur, ears perking up. “I will take that as a yes. America, I will never understand how you could do this to your cats,” he says and scoops Tony up. He goes because there was food mentioned and it was that or garbage and he still had a shred of standards left.

After a quick argument with some hotel staff members he learns this guy is a _prince_ though of what nation Tony is unsure and the accent isn’t familiar to him. He lets his companion carry him off to his room though and as promised Tony gets fed. He was desperate enough to eat the cat food but when room service comes later he quickly abandons it for the meatballs on that spaghetti. It was the good stuff too, the kind you might actually find in Italy and his little Italian heart was singing. Luckily for him his companion was nice enough to feed him the meatballs.

“If you get sick from eating those I want you to remember who asked for them,” he says in a very serious tone. Tony ignores him and continues to lick the sauce off the meatballs before attempting to devour them whole.

*

T’Challa couldn’t _leave_ the cat, he was special, T’Challa could feel it. So he keeps the fuzzy dark brown cat around and discovers that the animal is extremely intelligent. And not at all fond of bathing himself in the normal cat way and instead had a bizarre preference for showers. He doesn’t mind so long as the cat is happy and on a whim he decides to take the cat home. The cat, however, didn’t seem pleased with this at first. But after some gentle persuasion about travelling and seeing the world the cat walks calmly into the crate and lets T’Challa travel with him.

Getting the cat into Wakanda was easier than getting a person into the country given that Wakanda actually _liked_ cats but his father had still been unimpressed. As usual he had to hear another lecture about how he could not keep gallivanting around getting into trouble in foreign nations and he could not keep brining cats home because he felt bad for them. But America was terrible to their cats! There were starving strays everywhere and people advocated to _not_ feed them. He could not _leave_ the animal there; it was hardly the cat’s fault that America did not know how to handle the animals. Wakanda did alright.

Shuri takes an immediate dislike to the cat though the cat likes her plenty. Strangely the cat shows a particular interest in Shuri’s designs. T’Challa had to admit his younger sibling was a talented inventor- Wakanda’s version of Tony Stark no doubt- but the cat’s interest was still odd. Shuri decides the cat’s interest is unwelcome and often forcibly removes the animal from her presence. T’Challa always makes up for it by feeding the cat bits of food, happy to see it gaining weight back.

*

Tony learns that T’Challa was from _Wakanda_ , which explained why he hadn’t recognized the accent, but takes a liking to the country. People everywhere liked him and fed him too, which was awesome because Wakandan food was the best. Except for that weird bird that was the national delicacy. He had out and out wrinkled his nose at that and ran off. Now, if T’Challa wanted to amuse himself, he got a bit of that bird’s meat and held it out to Tony so he’d come over thinking it was chicken only to be betrayed deeply by that nasty bird. It never failed to make the prince laugh and he knows the prince could use a laugh.

T’Chaka was a good man and a great king, but he didn’t seem to understand his son much. Sometimes there were moments when he gained some kind of insight but most of the time T’Chaka was trying to wrangle his son into his royal role and T’Challa wanted none of it. So Tony starts to tamper with things. T’Challa needed to go to London England for some diplomacy thing, whoops, the tickets were lost. T’Challa was as stressed as his father so he wasn’t even a suspect.

T’Challa needed to go to some fancy dinner? Well, Tony pretended to be sick and Wakandans take their cats seriously, he wasn’t about to leave Tony’s side. T’Challa had to go off to some other part of the world for some other diplomacy thing? Well, Tony tore up the tickets thinking they were toys. And so this went on long enough that T’Challa catches on.

“You’re purposefully making sure I don’t have to do things I don’t want to, aren’t you?” he asks. He uses English because Wakandan was lost on him and T’Challa realized that long ago.

Tony nods and T’Challa’s eyes go wide. “You are not a normal cat, are you?” he asks. Tony gives another nod and to his surprise T’Challa looks betrayed. “You’ve seen me in the shower!” he says, upset.

Tony meows in his own defense because _excuse_ him; he did not intentionally look unless he needed to see where he was going! A man needed privacy, he knew, but a cat had to keep his hair clean and Tony has already been reduced to using a littler box after a disastrous encounter with a toilet had ruled that option out. He was _not_ going to lick his hair clean like some kind of heathen!

“That is creepy!” T’Challa tells him. Tony meows again because T’Challa has watched him poop so he couldn’t complain about privacy. It had been an accident mostly because T’Challa seemed to note that Tony preferred privacy but _still_. It happened.

“What kind of cat are you?” he asks, squinting at Tony. All he can do is meow like a useless tit. “Have you been… human?” he asks. Tony’s ears perk up and T’Challa looks annoyed. “Oh come on, you know humans like privacy and you climbed in my shower!” Tony meows in annoyance at him again because it _couldn’t be helped_. If T’Challa gave him his own shower time he wouldn’t crawl into T’Challa’s showers. Obviously. Even if he would miss T’Challa washing his hair.

“I know Americans don’t normally shower with each other,” T’Challa tells him, eyes narrowed. Tony swats his nose with his paw and looks pointedly at the shredded tickets to Cairo on the ground. T’Challa follows his gaze and sighs, “I guess I will give you some credit. You have been useful. Too bad I am going to have to figure out how to turn you into a human again.”

*

T’Challa, true to his word, _does_ turn Tony human again not that Shuri was impressed with him. “You were creeping my designs!” she accuses. She had gotten in on this mess when T’Challa’s tickets to formal events and political power plays starting turning up in _her_ room. T’Chaka was very confused about this and T’Challa hadn’t known anything about Tony’s plans to throw the princess into T’Challa’s role. She wanted it and T’Challa didn’t. The king would get along far better with his son _and_ his daughter if he stopped pushing each of them into positions they didn’t want.

Shuri loved inventing but dreamed of a life in politics, T’Challa hated politics and dreamed of a life inventing. Switching roles would solve both of their problems _and_ stop them from butting heads with their obviously very loving father. Except not Shuri was being annoying and Tony rolls his eyes.

“I was not creeping your designs, none of the stuff interested me _that_ much and even if it did it’s reliant of the conductivity of vibranium, which I have no access to. They were a distraction at best- a well constructed distraction but still a distraction,” he throws in when Shuri looks offended.

“Leave it be, Shuri. I heard our father talking to Zuri last night and he was going to ask _you_ to go to Cairo in place of me. Tony has done you a favor,” he says.

Shuri glares at him suspiciously but leaves him be. T’Challa is nice enough to walk with him back to the massive mansion he lived in. And it was massive by _Tony’s_ standards too, not just by normal people standards. Now he guessed he knew how Rhodey felt when he was nine walking into Tony’s mansion when he was used to a house. T’Challa’s mansion was the size of a damn village Tony swore, and it wasn’t any smaller to him as a human than it was when he was a cat.

“Why did you meddle with my life like this?” T’Challa asks finally.

“One, I was dead ass bored. Two, your father loves you and your sister but he keeps trying to shove you both into roles you don’t want. If he just stopped trying to make his first born the heir to the throne just because that’s expected than the three of you wouldn’t fight amongst yourselves so much. I can see that he wants a good relationship with you both, he just didn’t know how to get there,” Tony says.

Contrast that with his own cold, calculating jackass of a father and honestly he was jealous. But he didn’t like seeing a good father accidentally make his family dysfunctional. T’Chaka loved his children; he could see it in every interaction they had. He truly wanted what was best for them; he just needed a little help in actually doing what was best for them. Once he took the hint instead of unknowingly shoving his children into roles they didn’t want Tony knew he’d be fine. He’s seen the way T’Chaka looked at his kids, how much love was in his gaze alone even when they disagreed. He didn’t deserve to be alienated from his kids.

“You know,” T’Challa says, “in my culture cats usually come with messages. We see them around all the time of course, but when they make a permanent impact like you have it is for a reason. And you should consider yourself lucky- foreigners have not influenced Wakanda in over two hundred years. That is impressive, though you will always be remembered as an American _cat_ , not an American _man_. Nonetheless I appreciate what you have done, I loath politics.”

So Tony knew, and Shuri not only loved politics but she lived for it. She was usually the one who wrote T’Challa’s speeches and he tweaked her designs. She was easily better than him at inventing but Tony could help speed him along, and if he was really lucky Shuri might be gracious enough to help speed _him_ along.

“I just did what looked reasonable. And the cat thing was a total coincidence, I just messed with the wrong witch and I was hungry when you found me,” he says.

T’Challa only smiles, “to you maybe that is what happened.”

*

Tony learns that his own shenanigans was almost nothing compared to T’Challa’s. he was just as reckless as Tony except he was so diplomatic when he was found out that he mostly guilted the people he wronged into letting him go, which was _excellent_. Plus he hated Howard more than Tony did, which was a bonus. Turns out a cat had wandered into the mansion’s garden and Howard told it to fuck off, which had told T’Challa all he needed to know about the man. Later he rescued the stray and horded it in Tony’s room, which Tony was fond of. He always loved cats and when his mom found it they all bonded over taking care of it. T’Challa like Maria far more than he hated Howard.

Still though, T’Challa was wild and reckless and Tony was absolutely happy to be along for the ride. Rhodey was less pleased with this because he had always attributed Tony’s wild streak with ‘white nonsense’ and now he was forced to admit that maybe white nonsense wasn’t the only thing at play here.

“Don’t you two ever make me do this again,” he hisses at them as they walk out of the police station. Rhodey had bailed them out like the gracious and wonderful friend he was.

“Deal,” Tony says, “also we got married.”

Rhodey jerks them both to a stop. “You got _what_?” he snaps, looking ready to drag them off to get the marriage annulled.

“It’s Vegas,” T’Challa says in their defense.

“Y’all need some impulse control,” it all Rhodey has to say to that.

**Author's Note:**

> [My writing Tumblr](https://tenspencerriedplease.tumblr.com/)


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